


Counting Stars

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25064164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Thank you to Rori (@fl0wer-boy on Tumblr) for the request w/Sledge and Snaf’s adopted son! I intended on making this a little bit bigger, but this sweet calm thing happened instead. I hope you like it, short and sweet though it is!Title is both a play on part of the fic and part of a lyric from a fave song, Stars by Hum.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Kudos: 5





	Counting Stars

They wished often they had a way to reach Armand’s mother, if only to give her updates on how he was doing if she would be comfortable with nothing else. 

But sometimes, they wished they could ask her things. How had Armand’s short time with her been, had anything happened. 

Especially with nights like this one, with the nightmares that never seemed to cease.

“I just put him back down,” Eugene whimpered. “I wish I knew what he keeps dreamin’ of, or that he could explain it better…” 

It wasn’t that Armand didn’t try, but at three years old, it was in a child’s tongue, in a way that they couldn’t quite decipher what the real-life version of his nightmares might be. Was the “big dog chasing me, big teeth,” indicative of an actual attack from a dog on his mother in the past, or something else? Had someone been searching for his mother, before she’d dropped Armand off with them? What of the ‘light goes away, never comes back, and I never see you or Daddy again.’ Just a random nightmare, or his first few memories of being hidden god only knew where with this mother? Her note said she’d been kicked out, but Snafu knew as good as anything that that didn’t mean others in her life might not have been looking for her. Maybe she wanted them to, maybe she didn’t. They only had the one note to go on, and it just wasn’t enough. 

Occasionally, after a moment, the crying would lessen and drop, but not this time. 

“I got it,” Snafu said before Eugene could move again. “Get some sleep.” 

The snore that answered him was a pleasant sound. Less pleasant and more concerning, Armand’s sobbing. 

He didn’t say a word as he went into Armand’s room, just picked him up and strode over to the open window. 

“You’re okay. Night’s out there, you hear it?” 

Armand sniffled, and made the soft spluttering sounds that only an extremely tired yet extremely upset baby trying to stop crying could make.

“Night isn’t gonna hurt you. Listen to it, you hear anything that’s gonna hurt you out there in the stars?” 

Armand shifted in his arms, so they could turn and watch the night sky together. 

“Daddy and I had to learn not to be scared of the nighttime too. But we did it,” Snafu murmured, choosing not to mention the nights where the nightmares came back. “You can too, I promise. Can you tell me what you see out there?” 

He moved closer to the window, letting Armand poke his tiny pudgy finger at the screen. “Star!” 

“Yeah, lots of ‘em! Aren’t they pretty?” 

Armand nodded, the nightmare and crying all but forgotten. “Puppy!” 

“That’s right, Ack Ack wanted to be outside tonight. He was cryin’ too, right by the door. Look at him, running around with his ball.” 

Ack Ack, for his part, was happily playing nighttime fetch with himself, dropping his tennis ball at one part of the yard, then racing over to get it, and repeating, as if it was the most fun he’d ever had. 

“We play outside?” 

“No, we have to go back to sleep. It’s three in the morning, little man. We got work tomorrow, and you gotta see your friends at daycare, with Ms. Mavis at her house. You wanna be awake for that, don’t you?” 

“We play outside,” Armand said, and wiggled in Snafu’s arms until he had no choice but to put him down. 

He followed Armand’s little feet as he toddled down the hall, down the stairs, through the kitchen to the back door, pointing helpfully to it just in case Snafu wasn’t sure where it was. 

“We go to bed,” Snafu said softly, kneeling down to meet Armand’s eye line. 

Armand shook his head. “Sleep scary. We play outside now.” 

“Then how will I get up for work later, and how will you be ready for daycare?” 

Armand shrugged, and reached for the doorknob. “Here, Papa.” 

He had a decision to make. 

The strict parent would have just picked Armand up, put him back in bed, and gone to bed themselves, crying be damned. He would never be able to do anything like that. 

The slightly too relaxed parent would let Armand out, and maybe sleep on the couch in the next room or on the kitchen floor in the vein of ‘keeping an eye on him.’ He didn’t like that either.

He picked Armand up, opened the door, and strode outside, the dew from the grass leaving his feet cold. 

“You start countin’ those stars, okay? We gotta know how many there are before we go to bed. Your Daddy’ll wanna know.” 

Armand loved counting, loved numbers in general. He was all too happy to sit on Snafu’s shoulders, counting as high as he could (to about ten), before starting over again. 

“How many tens do I got?” Armand yawned after a good hour of counting.

“At least a thousand,” Snafu smiled, as Ack Ack ran past them for what had to be his thousandth lap of fetch. 

“That a lot?” 

“Yeah, it is. You think you counted all of ‘em?” 

Armand yawned again, and wiggled until Snafu moved him off his shoulders and cradled him against his chest. “I dunno. We go sleep?” 

“You wanna go to sleep?” 

Armand nodded and rubbed his eyes, snuggling into Snafu’s chest. “We go bed.” 

Inside, Eugene was on the floor of Armand’s room, likely planning on waiting for them to come back in once he found them missing. However, he was completely passed out, directly in front of the open side of Armand’s tiny bed. 

“Lord, but aren’t we just a wonder,” Snafu sighed as he leaned carefully over Eugene to set Armand in his bed. “I’m gonna grab a blanket and pillow for me and Daddy. You stay put.” 

Neither of his boys had moved by the time he returned, and both were lightly snoring as well. 

“Ain’t no fuckin’ way any of us are makin’ it to anything,” he sighed as he tossed down a pillow for himself, and carefully moved a pillow under Eugene’s head. “I’ll call in an hour…leave a message for ‘em all. Gonna say you were sick, kiddo. Don’t wanna encourage lying, but goddamn am I tired.” 

He stared at them, and rubbed his eyes. “And both of you are dead asleep, so I’m talking to myself.” 

He muttered to himself for the next hour to keep awake, about anything and everything, before calling their workplaces and Ms. Mavis, so she wouldn’t fret when Armand didn’t show up for the day. She, however, actually answered.

“I’m so sorry, this is way too early, but Armand is sick, and I’ve been up with him all night-” 

“Lavender is good for nightmares,” Ms. Mavis said gently. “For you and Eugene, or the boy. If anyone in town asks during our little field trip to the park today, I’ll make sure they know Armand was ‘sick.’“ 

“You-” 

“He hasn’t slept through a nap time without waking up crying for weeks,” she interrupted. “I was going to mention it the next time it happened; I hoped it was just a fluke. But whatever he’s been through before y’all got him must haunt his little mind. Good on you for making sure he’s gettin’ some sleep now. And you do the same.” 

He thanked her, and pondered if a little lavender plant might not be safe in Armand’s room if he built a shelf for it, and put it up high away from Armand and the cats. 

He went to bed with more tens in his mind, in measurements and money. Anything to help Armand sleep.

He knew from experience they couldn’t spend every night counting the stars.


End file.
